Teaching Online

[spork]

A thread for all things related to teaching online.

[downer]

How about having a whole a whole section devoted to online teaching in its many forms?

[polly_mer]

How about having a whole a whole section devoted to online teaching in its many forms?

Once the thread gets big enough to split and then to need a container to group the multiple threads, then a whole section makes sense.

For the test at the moment, we're gauging interest by seeing what threads take off in the broad categories.

[Hegemony]

Here's a conundrum: I see that many sites have sprung up that will take your online course for you.  Many of our online courses have online, open-book exams, so the student never has to show up in person at all.  So presumably a ringer could go undetected.  Is requiring an in-person exam the only way to defeat this, or do folks know other ways?

As I was looking at some of the sites, a little dialogue box popped up with "Can we help you?"  So I asked if they could handle a class in late antique theology.  Sure they could!  I warned, "The teacher says its not easy have to know coptic."  Sure, they could do that! 

Hey, maybe they pay their Coptic teachers more than my university does, and I could jump into a more lucrative career! 

[mamselle]

A friend in IT swears that the hackers just work in the office next-door to the online seclops urity folks. One creates the bug, the other develops the security updates you have to buy to fix it.

Maybe this is like that!

Ugh.

M.

[LibbyG]

I'm having an issue with a fully online course. It's a required course for multiple majors and a higher-than-usual failure rate, and so it has a really high demand and helps a lot of students get or stay on track to degree completion. It's gone really well, and I'd like to keep offering it.

However, the last two times I taught it I saw obvious cheating on the open-book exams. Each round there were two or three students failing miserably throughout the course who suddenly submitted high-scoring finals (with terminology not from the course). You'll just have to trust me that these students could not possibly have YouTubed their way to competence all of a sudden. Clearly, they recruited ringers as they realized that they were on track to fail a high-stakes course. 

So, I guess my two choices are to make students come to campus for the exams (and show ID cards) or to see about some of those remote web-cam proctoring services (which always seem creepy and intrusive to me). For pedagogical reasons, I can't replace exams with projects.

But are there other options I'm missing? Options that better preserve the accessibility of the course for the vast majority who aren't cheating?

[darkstarrynight]

I'm having an issue with a fully online course. It's a required course for multiple majors and a higher-than-usual failure rate, and so it has a really high demand and helps a lot of students get or stay on track to degree completion. It's gone really well, and I'd like to keep offering it.

However, the last two times I taught it I saw obvious cheating on the open-book exams. Each round there were two or three students failing miserably throughout the course who suddenly submitted high-scoring finals (with terminology not from the course). You'll just have to trust me that these students could not possibly have YouTubed their way to competence all of a sudden. Clearly, they recruited ringers as they realized that they were on track to fail a high-stakes course. 

So, I guess my two choices are to make students come to campus for the exams (and show ID cards) or to see about some of those remote web-cam proctoring services (which always seem creepy and intrusive to me). For pedagogical reasons, I can't replace exams with projects.

But are there other options I'm missing? Options that better preserve the accessibility of the course for the vast majority who aren't cheating?

We have online exams proctored by examity. It is not creepy and has worked seamlessly for students both in the testing center and at a distance.

[downer]

I tell students it is up to them to find a place that proctors exams if they don't want to take the exam on campus. They have used both their local public library and their local community college.

It is a bit of a pain if there are lots students doing this at different places, but it is an option.

[cc_alan]

But are there other options I'm missing? Options that better preserve the accessibility of the course for the vast majority who aren't cheating?

I teach a hybrid chemistry class. The lecture is online and the required lab is face-to-face.

The lecture is structured with a number of assignments for each chapter. The real reason is to keep them moving through the material throughout each week since the assignments have staggered due dates and to try and minimize the urge to cram right before the exam. A bonus from my perspective is that if they are going to pay someone to do it, then they are going to be paying quite a bit. Can you add work that adds to the class and isn't just perceived as busy-work by the students?

The face-to-face lab also helps (not an option I presume for you, though). I get to see them each week and their lab work correlates pretty strongly with the online work. The few time it didn't and I suspected something, the student dropped.

Every term I have someone who tries to avoid the face-to-face lab part and substitute something else, but we've tightened up the requirements on it (ie major 0-point hammer!) and we've been able to convince our accommodations office that not coming to lab is not an option in a lab-based class.

[LibbyG]

Thanks, everyone! I think I will just insist on proctored exams (remote or on campus) this next round or two and see if it's really all that disruptive. It's better than not offering the class at all. I do have a lot of low-stakes graded assignments, which is part of why the sudden vertiginous rise in the last exam (for just a couple students) is so clearly out of step with prior performance.

I do love being able to offer this class online, though. It's a lot of procedures, so some students really benefit from being able to watch the little lesson videos I make over and over again - an option students don't have in a traditional f2f class. And for those lessons, I've really been pleased with VoiceThread. Any other VoiceThread users here?

[Hegemony]

Can you explain what VoiceThread is?

[LibbyG]

It's an app. To make a VoiceThread you upload media (slides, images, video, websites) and then add comments as either text or audio. For my lesson videos I use mostly slides with audio narration, and I can use the app doodads to mark what I'm talking about. You can set your VoiceThread to accept text and/or audio comments from viewers, which they insert at particular points in time. Like they could type "What does that mean?" right after the audio sentence they didn't understand, and then that word bubble would pop up at that point in any subsequent view of the VoiceThread. I could then type in a reply. It's meant to support a rich, multimedia discussion that exists on a timeline but still unfolds asynchonously.

[cc_alan]

Interesting, LibbyG. I just looked it up.

Does your institution have a site license for it?

Do your students like it and use it?

[sprout]

It's an app. To make a VoiceThread you upload media (slides, images, video, websites) and then add comments as either text or audio. For my lesson videos I use mostly slides with audio narration, and I can use the app doodads to mark what I'm talking about. You can set your VoiceThread to accept text and/or audio comments from viewers, which they insert at particular points in time. Like they could type "What does that mean?" right after the audio sentence they didn't understand, and then that word bubble would pop up at that point in any subsequent view of the VoiceThread. I could then type in a reply. It's meant to support a rich, multimedia discussion that exists on a timeline but still unfolds asynchonously.

A few faculty (including myself) are piloting VoiceThread at my school.  I'm looking for ways to get better interaction between classes with my hybrid bio students, so I'm glad to hear you've had good success with it.

[LibbyG]

From CC_Alan: Interesting, LibbyG. I just looked it up.

Does your institution have a site license for it?

Do your students like it and use it?

My campus has a license, and it's integrated into our LMS. So far, as an instructor, I've only used it in a one-to-many kind of way. I make my lesson, students watch it, and that's it. But I think I'm going to try having students make VoiceThreads and interact with VTs produced by peers in a f2f class I'm teaching Sp 2020.

So I don't have student feedback to convey, but the student user-experience with it is just like the faculty one. It's just media + commentary on a timeline, so even though it's very flexible, it's still simple to interact with.